Sproul stayed awake when the house was quiet, still pondering.




IV


During the next few days, as one treads farther and farther out upon
thin ice to test it, the Colonel craftily set about regaining,
inch by inch, his lost throne as tyrant. Occasionally he checked
himself in some alarm, to wonder what meant that ridging of the
Cap'n's jaw-muscles, and whether he really heard the seaman's teeth
gritting. Once, when he recoiled before an unusually demoniac glare
from Sproul, the latter whined, after a violent inward struggle:

"It beats all how my rheumaticks has been talkin' up lately. I don't
seem to have no ginger nor spirit left in me. I reckon I got away
from the sea jest in time. I wouldn't even dare to order a nigger
to swab decks, the way I'm feelin' now."

"You've allus made a good deal of talk about how many men you've
handled in your day," said the Colonel, tucking a thumb under his
suspender and leaning back with supercilious cock of his gray
eyebrows. "It's bein' hinted round town here more or less that you're
northin' but bluff. I don't realize, come to think it over, how I
ever come to let you git such a holt in my fam'ly. I--"

The two were sitting, as was their custom in those days of the